SUNDANCE Film Festival 2018 Jan 18, 2018 – Jan 28

[Chris Knipp]

Nicolas Cage in Midnight chainsaw flick Mandy


Sundance 2018

At at time, mid-to-late January, when there is little worth watching coming out in theaters, it's nice to follow Robert Redford's Sundance Film Festival with its promise of a whole world of good new movies on the way.

The Sundance Film Festival is on, Jan 18-28, 2018. I will give some reactions to the films from a variety of sources. Here first are basic lists of some of the main features and docs. You can find the entire festival program of the Sundance online site here. Other categories are the Next films; US Documentary Competition, World Documentary Competition, Documentary Premieres, Spotlight series, and Midnight films. (Jordan Peele's Get Out was a Sundance Midnight debut.)

There has been praise for Tamara Jenkins' return to filmmaking, one of three Opening Night films, Private Life, a drama about a couple trying to get pregnant. In Don't Worry, He Won't Get Very Far on Foot, Joaquin Phoenix is playing in a 12-step recovery drama about the paralysed cartoonist John Callaghan getting over his drinking problem. Gus Van Sant's well-meaning movie may be a far cry from Lynne Ramsey's upcoming, riveting You Were Never Really Here (is Phoenix going for sentence-titles now?), but it's another physical transformation for the protean, shape-shifting actor. It may be interesting for odd appearances from Rooney Mara, Jonah Hill, and Udo Kier, but the Guardian's Jordan Hoffman called parts of it "cringeworthy."

No unmistakably great film has emerged in the early days of 2018's Sundance - or seems waiting to show. But there are, at least, many well known names in the cast and directorial lists, and as the reviews unfold it's clear there is lots to peek our curiosity. This is certainly no roster of obscure little indie films. But still, there are some plucky small debuts as well, concealed among the famous names at Park City this year.


Phoenix in Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot

Premieres

For details on Sundance online go here.

A Futile and Stupid Gesture
Director David Wain
Screenwriter John Aboud, Michael Colton
Cast Will Forte, Martin Mull, Domhnall Gleeson, Matt Walsh, Joel McHale, Emmy Rossum
U.S.A. / 101 Min

A Kid Like Jake
Director Silas Howard
Screenwriter Daniel Pearle
Cast Claire Danes, Jim Parsons, Octavia Spencer, Priyanka Chopra, Ann Dowd, Amy Landecker
U.S.A. / 92 Min

Beirut
Director Brad Anderson
Screenwriter Tony Gilroy
Cast Jon Hamm, Rosamund Pike, Dean Norris, Larry Pine, Shea Whigham
U.S.A. / 110 Min

Colette
Director Wash Westmoreland
Screenwriter Wash Westmoreland, Richard Glatzer, Rebecca Lenkiewicz
Cast Keira Knightley, Dominic West, Fiona Shaw, Denise Gough, Eleanor Tomlinson, Aiysha Hart
United Kingdom / 111 Min

Come Sunday
Director Joshua Marston
Screenwriter Marcus Hinchey
Cast Chiwetel Ejiofor, Danny Glover, Condola Rashad, Jason Segel, Lakeith Stanfield, Martin Sheen
U.S.A. / 106 Min

Damsel
Director David Zellner, Nathan Zellner
Screenwriter David Zellner, Nathan Zellner
Cast Robert Pattinson, Mia Wasikowska, David Zellner, Robert Forster, Nathan Zellner, Joe Billingiere
U.S.A. / 113 Min

Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far On Foot
Director Gus Van Sant
Screenwriter Gus Van Sant (screenplay), John Callahan (biography)
Cast Joaquin Phoenix, Jonah Hill, Rooney Mara, Jack Black
U.S.A. / 113 Min

Hearts Beat Loud
Director Brett Haley
Screenwriter Brett Haley, Marc Basch
Cast Nick Offerman, Kiersey Clemons, Ted Danson, Sasha Lane, Blythe Danner, Toni Collette
U.S.A. / 97 Min

Juliet, Naked
Director Jesse Peretz
Screenwriter Tamara Jenkins, Jim Taylor, Phil Alden Robinson, Evgenia Peretz
Cast Rose Byrne, Ethan Hawke, Chris O'Dowd
United Kingdom / 97 Min

Leave No Trace
Director Debra Granik
Screenwriter Debra Granik, Anne Rosellini
Cast Ben Foster, Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie, Jeff Kober, Dale Dickey
U.S.A. / 108 Min

Ophelia
Director Claire McCarthy
Screenwriter Semi Chellas
Cast Daisy Ridley, Naomi Watts, Clive Owen, George MacKay, Tom Felton, Devon Terrell
United Kingdom / 114 Min

Private Life
Director Tamara Jenkins
Screenwriter Tamara Jenkins
Cast Kathryn Hahn, Paul Giamatti, Molly Shannon, John Carroll Lynch, Kayli Carter
U.S.A. / 127 Min

Puzzle
Director Marc Turtletaub
Screenwriter Oren Moverman
Cast Kelly Macdonald, Irrfan Khan, David Denman, Bubba Weiler, Austin Abrams, Liv Hewson
U.S.A. / 103 Min

The Catcher Was a Spy
Director Ben Lewin
Screenwriter Robert Rodat
Cast Paul Rudd, Mark Strong, Sienna Miller, Jeff Daniels, Guy Pearce, Paul Giamatti
U.S.A. / 94 Min

The Happy Prince
Director Rupert Everett
Screenwriter Rupert Everett
Cast Colin Firth, Emily Watson, Colin Morgan, Edwin Thomas, Rupert Everett
Germany/Belgium/Italy / 105 Min

The Long Dumb Road
Director Hannah Fidell
Screenwriter Hannah Fidell, Carson Mell
Cast Tony Revolori, Jason Mantzoukas, Taissa Farmiga, Grace Gummer, Ron Livingston, Casey Wilson
U.S.A. / 90 Min

[Chris Knipp]

Garrett Hedlund in Burden

U.S. Dramatic Competition

See the Sundance online listing here. You can look up detailed descriptions of each film.

American Animals
Director Bart Layton
Screenwriter Bart Layton
Cast Evan Peters, Barry Keoghan, Blake Jenner, Jared Abrahamson, Ann Dowd, Udo Kier
U.S.A./United Kingdom / 116 Min

BLAZE
Director Ethan Hawke
Screenwriter Ethan Hawke, Sybil Rosen
Cast Benjamin Dickey, Alia Shawkat, Josh Hamilton, Charlie Sexton
U.S.A. / 127 Min

Blindspotting
Director Carlos López Estrada
Screenwriter Rafael Casal, Daveed Diggs
Cast Daveed Diggs, Rafael Casal, Janina Gavankar, Jasmine Cephas Jones
U.S.A. / 95 Min

Burden
Director Andrew Heckler
Screenwriter Andrew Heckler
Cast Garrett Hedlund, Forest Whitaker, Andrea Riseborough, Tom Wilkinson, Usher Raymond
U.S.A. / 129 Min

Eighth Grade
Director Bo Burnham
Screenwriter Bo Burnham
Cast Elsie Fisher, Josh Hamilton
U.S.A. / 94 Min

I Think We're Alone Now
Director Reed Morano
Screenwriter Mike Makowsky
Cast Peter Dinklage, Elle Fanning
U.S.A. / 93 Min

Lizzie
Director Craig William Macneill
Screenwriter Bryce Kass
Cast Chloë Sevigny, Kristen Stewart, Jamey Sheridan, Fiona Shaw, Kim Dickens, Denis O'Hare
U.S.A. / 105 Min

Monster
Director Anthony Mandler
Screenwriter Radha Blank, Cole Wiley, Janece Shaffer
Cast Kelvin Harrison Jr., Jeffrey Wright, Jennifer Hudson, Rakim Mayers, Jennifer Ehle, Tim Blake Nelson
U.S.A. / 112 Min

Monsters and Men
Director Reinaldo Marcus Green
Screenwriter Reinaldo Marcus Green
Cast John David Washington, Anthony Ramos, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Chanté Adams, Nicole Beharie, Rob Morgan
U.S.A. / 95 Min

NANCY
Director Christina Choe
Screenwriter Christina Choe
Cast Andrea Riseborough, J. Smith-Cameron, Steve Buscemi, Ann Dowd, John Leguizamo
U.S.A. / 87 Min

Sorry to Bother You
Director Boots Riley
Screenwriter Boots Riley
Cast Lakeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Steven Yeun, Jermaine Fowler, Armie Hammer, Omari Hardwick
U.S.A. / 112 Min

The Kindergarten Teacher
Director Sara Colangelo
Screenwriter Sara Colangelo
Cast Maggie Gyllenhaal, Parker Sevak, Rosa Salazar, Anna Baryshnikov, Michael Chernus, Gael García Bernal
U.S.A. / 96 Min

The Miseducation of Cameron Post
Director Desiree Akhavan
Screenwriter Desiree Akhavan, Cecilia Frugiuele
Cast Chloë Grace Moretz, Sasha Lane, Forrest Goodluck, John Gallagher Jr., Jennifer Ehle
U.S.A. / 90 Min

The Tale
Director Jennifer Fox
Screenwriter Jennifer Fox
Cast Laura Dern, Isabelle Nélisse, Jason Ritter, Elizabeth Debicki, Ellen Burstyn, Common
U.S.A. / 114 Min

TYREL
Director Sebastián Silva
Screenwriter Sebastián Silva
Cast Jason Mitchell, Christopher Abbott, Michael Cera, Caleb Landry Jones, Ann Dowd
U.S.A. / 86 Min

Wildlife
Director Paul Dano
Screenwriter Paul Dano, Zoe Kazan
Cast Carey Mulligan, Ed Oxenbould, Bill Camp, Jake Gyllenhaal
U.S.A. / 104 Min

[Chris Knipp]

Yardie, Idris Elba

World Cinema Dramatic Competition

Look up Sundance's online descriptions here.

And Breathe Normally
Director Ísold Uggadóttir
Screenwriter Ísold Uggadóttir
Cast Kristín Thóra Haraldsdóttir, Babetida Sadjo, Patrik Nökkvi Pétursson
Iceland/Sweden/Belgium / 95 Min

Butterflies
Director Tolga Karaçelik
Screenwriter Tolga Karaçelik
Cast Tolga Tekin, Bartu Küçükçağlayan, Tuğçe Altuğ, Serkan Keskin, Hakan Karsak
Turkey / 117 Min

Dead Pigs
Director Cathy Yan
Screenwriter Cathy Yan
Cast Vivian Wu, Haoyu Yang, Mason Lee, Meng Li, David Rysdahl
China / 130 Min

Holiday
Director Isabella Eklöf
Screenwriter Isabella Eklöf, Johanne Algren
Cast Victoria Carmen Sonne, Lai Yde, Thijs Römer
Denmark/Netherlands/Sweden / 90 Min

Loveling
Director Gustavo Pizzi
Screenwriter Gustavo Pizzi, Karine Teles
Cast Karine Teles, Otávio Müller, Adriana Esteves, Konstantinos Sarris, César Troncoso
Brazil/Uruguay / 95 Min

Pity
Director Babis Makridis
Screenwriter Efthimis Filippou, Babis Makridis
Cast Yannis Drakopoulos, Evi Saoulidou, Nota Tserniafski, Makis Papadimitriou, Georgina Chryskioti, Evdoxia Androulidaki
Greece/Poland / 97 Min

Rust
Director Aly Muritiba
Screenwriter Aly Muritiba, Jessica Candal
Cast Giovanni De Lorenzi, Tifanny Dopke, Enrique Diaz, Clarissa Kiste, Dudah Azevedo, Pedro Inoue
Brazil / 100 Min

The Guilty
Director Gustav Möller
Screenwriter Gustav Möller, Emil Nygaard Albertsen
Cast Jakob Cedergren, Jessica Dinnage, Johan Olsen, Omar Shargawi
Denmark / 85 Min

The Queen of Fear
Director Valeria Bertuccelli, Fabiana Tiscornia
Screenwriter Valeria Bertuccelli
Cast Valeria Bertuccelli, Diego Velázquez, Gabriel Eduardo "Puma" Goity, Darío Grandinetti
Argentina/Denmark / 107 Min

Time Share (Tiempo Compartido)
Director Sebastián Hofmann
Screenwriter Julio Chavezmontes, Sebastián Hofmann
Cast Luis Gerardo Méndez, Miguel Rodarte, Andrés Almeida, Cassandra Ciangherotti, Montserrat Marañon, RJ Mitte
Mexico/Netherlands / 96 Min

Un Traductor
Director Rodrigo Barriuso, Sebastián Barriuso
Screenwriter Lindsay Gossling
Cast Rodrigo Santoro, Maricel Álvarez, Yoandra Suárez
Canada/Cuba / 107 Min

Yardie
Director Idris Elba
Screenwriter Brock Norman Brock, Martin Stellman
Cast Aml Ameen, Shantol Jackson, Stephen Graham, Fraser James, Sheldon Shepherd, Everaldo Cleary
United Kingdom / 101 Min

[Chris Knipp]

Keira Knightley in Colette

US Dramatic Competition: first looks.

Hoffman of the Guardian has high praise for Kindergarten Teacher, which stars Maggie Gyllenhaal as the teacher, who gets way too involved in a boy in her charges who has a strange poetic gift. He says this is one of Maggie's best performances and the movie is great. The only catch: it's a remake of Nadav Lapid's 2014 Israeli film (ND/NF 2015). Is that necessary? Hoffman says Why not? He also gives an all-star rating to experienced documentarian Jennifer Fox's potentially controversial feature film The Tale, which stars Laura Dern and is about child sexual abuse. Ellen Burstyn plays Dern's mother. It bored him, then disturbed him so much he wanted to throw up, but he liked that. He wants people to see this film, but will never want to see it again.

Hoffman also liked, but minus one star, Wash Westmoreland’sColette (Guardian again), about the French writer, with a good performance, he says, by Keira Knightley. Dominic West plays Colette's husband, Willy, and also is fine, Hoffman says; and the film subtle and nuanced. The only trouble for me, but a big one, would be this is a historical film about France that's all in English. A needless prejudice, no doubt, but a strong one.

Owen Gleiberman of Variety likes Ethan Hawke's Blaze, an unusual portrait of a blowsy, "dissolute country-blues singer", Blaze Foley told "in a redneck-verité style that's as delicate as it is daring." It's meandering and random, yet "beautifully made," selling its offbeat style and less than stellar subject, a minor country-blues singer who died at 39 but left some songs that entered the genre's repertoire.

Gleiberman again has good things to say about Wildlife, actor Paul Dano's, you may be surprised to see, directorial debut (you might have expected one earlier). It's an "artfully deliberate small-town saga, with Carey Mulligan and Jake Gyllenhaal as haunted parents, with young Australian actor Ed Oxenbould as their "sensitive and owlish" 14-year-old son. Here is a family saga that hasn't any trendy issue topic, but is just a study of people - and of changes happening toward the end of the Fifties. Dano wrote the screenplay with his partner, Zoe Kazan, adapting a novel by Richard Ford set in Great Falls, Montana. Gleiberman's loving description of this movie, about unpredictable adults observed from the point of view of the adolescent boy, makes you want to see it.

Juliet, Naked, also described admiringly by Gleiberman, is directed by Jesse Peretz and stars Ethan Hawke as Tucker Crowe, a musical n'er-do-well who gave up performing, but turns to being responsible toward a series of children he's sired by different women. He goes to London to see one who's pregnant, and is confronted by others he's responsible to, as well as Duncan, his greatest fan, played by Chris O'Dowd.


Robin Williams in Come Inside My Mind

______________________
US Documentary Competition.
The Guardian gives minus two stars to two documentaries from the festival. Benjamin Lee likes, but not wholly, Queen of Versailles director Lauren Greenfield's new skewering of consumer capitalism, entitled Generation Wealth. Greenfield, who has been working on this topic for 25 years, is brilliant when talking about the way money ruins people's lives, but this one gets sidetracked too much with talking about her own family, Lee feels.

Guardian critic (new?) Charlie Phillips sort of likes a new doc by Marina Zenovich called Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind. Fascinating archival footage, Phillips says, but the film fails to go deep or see the bigger picture; not enough analysis or "assessment" of Williams' contradictions between manic silliness and surprisingly serious appraisals of the world; a failure to "pursue darker strands" in the story. Owen Gleiberman in Variety is less fussy about the Robin Williams film, calling it "conventional but beautifully made" and complementing it in many ways, pointing out the film is rich in rare outtakes and previously unseen footage, like an "acceptaince speech" Williams gave in immitation of Jack Nicholson when Nicholson won the 2003 Critics Choice Award for About Schmidt, but was "too baked" to go up and give a speech himself.

Hollywood Reporter descries in not terribly involving detail This Is Home, a TV-ready (and slightly bland and generic) documentary about Syrian refugees adjusting to life in the US. It focuses on a series of families or parts of families in Baltimore, where 400 of the 21,000 Syrian refugees accepted into the US were sent by 2016.

The Tale sounds repulsive; The Kindergarten Teacher, derivative; Colette in the wrong language; Generation Wealth diffuse. Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind sounds like the one among these Sundance films so far to seek out - and also Wildlife.

[Chris Knipp]

Monsters and Men

More Sundance: two urban films focused on race.

Switching to the LA Times, which now has Justin Chang, former head critic for Variety, at the center of its movie reviewing, we find Blindspotting, first feature of Carlos López Estrada, a movie delivering a lovingly spot-on picture of the San Francisco Bay Area, especially Oakland, "envisioned here as both a locus of fast-encroaching gentrification and a seething cauldron of racial anxiety." The focus is on two men, played by the joint authors of the screenplay, Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal, as best friends and moving-van driver co-workers, united by a love of hip-hop, who're trying to avoid contact with the police. Diggs is a star of Hamilton, and the movie is almost a "a full-on slamming, rhyming musical." It's a little too over-explanatory and exaggerated, Chang thinks, but is "conceptually audacious" and "bristling with energy and ambition."

Monsters and Men "covers some of the same ground to less attention-grabbing but quietly superior effect" and is "tough-minded and boldly unresolved." By another first-time filmmaker, Reinaldo Marcus Green, this is "a triptych of stories unfolding in present-day Brooklyn, each set in motion by another fatal police shooting of an unarmed black man." A video of one killing is posted online. Peaceful protests follow but also anti-police violence. The focus settles on Dennis (John David Washington), a black cop caught between two worlds, profiled by white cops when off duty, criticized by family for being part of the problem. Three men of color are "posed at a moral crossroads."

[Chris Knipp]

Leave No Trace

Sundance reviews from Indiewire: Debra Granik returns; and another Moonlight?

Debra Granik made waves with her 2010 Winter's Bone (SFIFF 2010), which incidentally put Jennifer Lawrence on the map. Now she's back in Sundance's Premieres section with Leave No race, about a homeless father and daughter living in a Park in Portland. David Erlich describes it in Indiewire as "modest but extraordinarily graceful." It's also surprisingly upbeat for a tale about people on the margins. But Erlich admits this film meanders and is not always gripping, and Will (Hell and High Wager's Ben Foster) and Tom (New Zealand actress Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie) sometimes are so generalized they become generic. Mike D'Angelo (Letterboxd) gives it 68/100, wishes Viggo Mortensen had played Will instead of the lead in Captain Fantastic(" In a less wacky register, obviously") and says "this confirms Granik as a major talent."

Eric Kohn again in Indidewire describes the wildly violent Midnight movie Mandy in which Nicolas Cage goes on a revenge rampage killing everyone in sight because he's lost someone. Not to be confused with Cage's other recent outing Mom and Dad, a nightmarish fantasy about a time when a 24-hour mass hysteria turns parents violently against their own children.

Jeremiah Zagar's We the Animals "is this year's Moonlight, says Eric Kohn in Indiewire. He also suggests it's cut-rate or "lower class" Terrence Malick, and concerns a half-latino boy living in a marginal family in upstate New York and discovering his queerness while running semi-wild among siblings and other odd locals in a narrative, based on a novel, that spans an undefined time period. From the Next section of Sundance.